I was about to start a thread on the Second Viennese School and then found this one. But there's been no discussion in four years? I'm hoping that by bumping it, it might generate more activity.

For the last week I've been concentrating on the music of Schoenberg and Berg - and really enjoying this return to their music. At one time I listened to them a lot but then drifted off into mainly Webern. I'm even getting into works that I never used to enjoy, like Gurre-Lieder.

So, any other 2VS fans out there?

 

So, any other 2VS fans out there?

Yep. On the previous thread back in '17, I said I was still trying to get into Berg. In 2021, I'm proud to proclaim that I'm farther along into Berg, mostly because I stopped worrying about trying to identify his arcane 12-tone/atonal quirks and hidden messages.

 

I like Webern’s later songs, the ones with opus numbers, IMO anyone who enjoys Wolff would enjoy these pieces. Dorothy Darrow seems to me to interpret the music particularly expressively.

I am very fond of the Webern op 24 concerto, the four violin duos, op 7 and the op 9 bagatelles for string quartet.

As far as Schoenberg is concerned, I’m quite interested in the string trio, which seems to me to resemble Bartok’s 6th quartet. And Moses and Aaron too.

I’ve enjoyed both the Berg operas in the opera house. Wozzek is a bit like Peter Grimes.

 

I like Webern's later songs, the ones with opus numbers, IMO anyone who enjoys Wolff would enjoy these pieces. Dorothy Darrow seems to me to interpret the music particularly expressively.

I am very fond of the Webern op 24 concerto, the four violin duos, op 7 and the op 9 bagatelles for string quartet.

As far as Schoenberg is concerned, I'm quite interested in the string trio, which seems to me to resemble Bartok's 6th quartet. And Moses and Aaron too.

I've enjoyed both the Berg operas in the opera house. Wozzek is a bit like Peter Grimes.

Those Berg operas are masterpieces, there was a time when I spent a lot of time with them, and have two books, one for each opera, with in-depth analysis written by George Perle, an important composer in his own right. His lieder is also wonderful.

For the last few days I created Spotify playlists for every Schoenberg opus (and also the works WoO) - including every recording on Spotify of each work. I've got them in a folder and can listen to each work from a number of recordings, or play randomly. I did a similar thing, although not as comprehensive for Berg. I already had a complete folder of Webern works. IMO, this is a huge advantage Spotify has over a CD collection which is prohibitively expensive to do something similar, and then playback is nowhere near as flexible.

My next project will be playlist folders for related composers, e.g, Zemlinsky, Schoeck, Schreker, and others.

 

I'm familiar with some of their better known pieces (and I'm fond of many of them), but I have to admit that I never delved too deep into their repertoire. It's something I'd like to do eventually.

 

Here's a disc in my collection that may be of interest to readers of this thread:

Recorded February 22-25, 2005 and released in 2007, pianist Steffen Schleiermacher performs pieces by, as the title says, "The Viennese School - Teachers & Followers". The works on this CD are composed by Arnold Schoenberg (tracks: 1 to 3, 27), Egon Wellesz (tracks: 4 to 6), Hanns Eisler (tracks: 11 to 14), Hanns Jelinek (tracks: 19 to 24), Józef Koffler (tracks: 7 to 10), Roberto Gerhard (tracks: 25, 25), and Viktor Ullmann (tracks: 15 to 18).

The point being: if you are interested in the music of the 2nd Viennese School, you may want to explore the less familiar composers with ties to Schoenberg including Wellesz, Eisler, Jelinek, Koffler, Gerhard, and Ullman.

This disc features piano music, but the listed composers also produced works in other formats, including chamber music and symphonies. The symphonies of Egon Wellesz and Roberto Gerhard, also in my collection, prove especially intriguing.

The second volume is intriguing, too.

View attachment 159433

View attachment 159434

The piano music on this one is by Schoenberg, Natalia Prawossudowitsch, Peter Schacht, Nikos Skalkottas, Marc Blitzstein, Erich Schmid, Leon Kirchner, Lou Harrison and John Cage.

A lot to explore.

 

The point being: if you are interested in the music of the 2nd Viennese School, you may want to explore the less familiar composers with ties to Schoenberg including Wellesz, Eisler, Jelinek, Koffler, Gerhard, and Ullman.

This disc features piano music, but the listed composers also produced works in other formats, including chamber music and symphonies. The symphonies of Egon Wellesz and Roberto Gerhard, also in my collection, prove especially intriguing.

The second volume is intriguing, too.

The piano music on this one is by Schoenberg, Natalia Prawossudowitsch, Peter Schacht, Nikos Skalkottas, Marc Blitzstein, Erich Schmid, Leon Kirchner, Lou Harrison and John Cage.

A lot to explore.

Thanks for that. I am interested in exploring the works of the lesser known composers on the periphery of the SVS. Edwin Stein, I think, was a student and Stefan Wolpe was a follower who studied with Webern on his way out of Europe. I've always considered Wellesz a principal, but maybe others don't. Moving to England and his subsequent denunciation by Schoenberg didn't help his standing.

 

Aimez-vous Luigi Dallapiccola?

 

My favourite Wozzek was based around a line of the doctor, where he tells Wozzek to live on a diet of beans. The whole production was based around baked beans.

View attachment 159445

 

My favourite Wozzek was based around a line of the doctor, where he tells Wozzek to live on a diet of beans. The whole production was based around baked beans.

Wow. When I think of Wozzek, I think of many things, none of which include baked beans.

 

This sums up my feeling on the Second Viennese School:

 

This sums up my feeling on the Second Viennese School:

Speaking as someone from Nashville, that song is absolutely perfect. Well, except the part about atonal music having no tonal center. As Robert Simpson said, "Atonal music is, after all, nothing else but tonal music in which the tonal functions occur and permute in the shortest possible space in time." But that wouldn't fit into the rhyming scheme, so I'll let it pass.

 

I've always enjoyed Schoenberg's music, he's one of my favorite composers. his late romantic style works are good - Pelleas & Melisande, Gurre-lieder, etc, but I esp like his atonal music, once he broke with traditional tonality...I remember most fondly when in school, we performed his 5 Pieces for Orchestra....that was a real ear-opener for many of us...fascinating to play..

Berg is really good, too, I've long enjoyed his works....one work that is sometimes overlooked, that I think is quite beautiful, is the Altenberg Lieder....Webern came later for me...originally I found it too sparse, too thin, spare...but I've come to enjoy his music much more...performing it helped a great deal...
I wish that some of my favorite conductors had performed/recorded more SVS music - the few efforts by Reiner and Solti are really excellent, I wish there were more....they excelled at bringing out the details in these scores, yet still maintaining the "big picture"...both conductors were superb when dealing with complex scores - ie - R. Strauss tone poems, operas, Stravinsky, etc...
It's too bad Monteux was not attracted to the SVS....his contribution might have been most welcome, had he been so inclined.

 

I have long liked the early Romantic Schoenberg and also the serial works that sound like Romantic music but with the wrong notes. But over the last couple of years I have developed a stronger taste for the more modernist spiky works like Moses und Aron. As the years go by my appreciation of Schoenberg grow and grow.

 

Is there any chance this thread might learn how to spell Wozzeck correctly?

 

What is it with 2nd Viennese School and hard-to-spell words? Wozzeck, Aron? Can't they use normal names like Marie and Lulu? Oh, wait . . .

 

Actually I have all that. Growing up the the southwest in rural ranch land, the whole cowboy, rodeo, country music thing was second nature. My wardrobe is 95% from Boot Barn or other western outfitters. I own several Stetson hats - straw and felt. A shirt like he has on? I have several in that style - they're Scully's. Except when I'm at the gym, I wear cowboy boots all the time. Several years ago I was in London going to the Proms for a few weeks - in full cowboy attire: hat, boots, etc.

BTW: Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony no 1 is a masterpiece, harder than heck to play. Maybe it takes actually playing some of this SVS music to really "get it". Whatever the eventual position of this atonal music will be, who knows? But at this time it seems the music will remain a niche product with very few followers. There was a lot of music from the 20th c added to the standard repertoire; not one work of the SVS made it. Tells you something.

 

Several years ago I was in London going to the Proms for a few weeks - in full cowboy attire: hat, boots, etc.

.

Everyone here would think you're a Village People groupie.

Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony no 1 . . . But at this time it seems the music will remain a niche product with very few followers. .

In fact the chamber symphony 1 sounds to me really accessible -- I can't imagine why someone who enjoys Richard Strauss wouldn't like it.

 

...yes, and by the top musicians/ensembles in the world.

Count me in as an SVS fanboy. I don't mind the label at all. I'll share some thoughts on Berg. He seems to be the stepchild of the group. Schoenberg and Webern get the most attention it seems on this site and many have admitted they don't listen much to Berg.

And that's a shame. It might be because he is not as controversial as the others, perhaps. I hope it's not for his music. I would urge them to really give him a listen. Three Pieces for Orchestra, Lyric Suite, whatever you can find. If you have the time and energy, my preference would be for you to hear and study Wozzeck for its sheer expressionism, gut-wrenching climaxes, and dramatic impact. It really is a tour de force of 20th century music. The technique and vocabulary are widely varied of 20th-century techniques, but all Berg's own.

Maybe they write him off as a Schoenberg copy-cat, overly-intellectual, a hack, a niche composer, a writer of tricks and gimmicks, etc. etc. (they'd be wrong). Be my guest. But there is one thing for which I cannot let anyone dispute (especially after listening and studying Wozzeck). One glaring fact about the man's music which is undeniable. And that is this-

Berg *MEANT* it.

And that is the very least we can ask of any composer.

 

I wouldn't necessarily agree that Berg receives less attention or respect than Schoenberg or Webern, although I understand what you're getting at. Based on his operas alone he has arguably had the most impact.

One thing that has always kind of bothered me is the lumping of these three composers into a "school." Their styles are very different, and while they all employed the 12-tone method, they all used it is different ways and in different degrees. In fact, I'd go as far to say that every composer who has used the 12-tone method uses it uniquely.

It reminds me of a similar thing with the "New York School" - with the composers and even more so for the painters.

 

I avoided the 2VC for my first couple years of classical listening because of its reputation, but once I actually started listening to it I fell in love with it. It's some of the most sublime, sensuous music of the 20th century; in some cases, like the Berg VC and Schoenberg's string quartets, it's been close to moving me to tears. It is really just the natural extension of Wagner, Mahler, and Strauss. I can't fathom why anyone would find it cold, academic, unlistenable, etc. I admit that Webern is more cerebral and tougher to get into, but I love the active experience of listening to his carefully calculated splashes of color and harmony like a pointillist painting - I find it highly relaxing and I think even the most curmudgeonly would find something interesting in, say, the Six Pieces for Orchestra. Besides the great Berg VC I also recommend Berg's Altenberg Lieder and Three Pieces for Orchestra, Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra and the last two movements of his String Quartet No. 2 for skeptics of atonal music.

 

With a little generalization you could describe them like this:

• Schönberg: The founder, the theorist
• Webern: The radical modernist, who inspired the next generation of serialists
• Berg: The one who wrote good music with it

When I hear Berg's violin concerto I can't help thinking it sounds good in spite of being dodecaphonic. Schönberg wrote his best music before inventing his twelve tone system. When other, beginning composers write dodecaphonic it usually sounds bad. Good music isn't just about which notes you use, but about orchestration, density, rhythm... The grandiosity of expressionism, the late romantic roots, Klangfarbenmelody and Sprechgesang were important style elements. It wasn't just about putting twelve notes after each other.

Schönberg predicted that his music would be widely appreciated in a hundred years, but that didn't come true. Even classic radio channels are still avoiding him, preferring "pleasant and relaxing" music. Most people have a negative opinion about atonal music, but they formed that opinion without listening to it. People don't run away screaming when they hear it; they just can't keep their attention with it, because they're not used to that kind of music. It's depressing for young composers. If the audience still hasn't accepted the music of a hundred years ago, then how can modern music of today ever gain a wider recognition?

 

With a little generalization you could describe them like this:

[*]Webern: The radical modernist, who inspired the next generation of serialists
[*]

I'm not sure. One thing I've heard said was that Webern was more influential in Europe, Schoenberg in the US.

Talking of influence, Berg was a direct influence on the early work of Klaus Hubler, who is an important 1980s Darmstadt composer, a pioneer of so called complexity. There's an excellent recording of his quartets by Arditti.

And I think that anyone who enjoys Webern would enjoy Brice Pauset's canons. There must be inspiration from Webern.

Not clear to me if there really is anything more than the most superficial relationship between the Ferneyhough trio and second quartet, and the Schoenberg trio and second quartet. Or between Pierrot Lunaire and Marteau sans Maître.

 

Wozzeck is the official spelling of the Berg opera. But it's wrong, the Büchner play is called "Woyzeck". Berg got to know the material in the first printed edition from 1879 that already used the differently spelled title.

Büchner's play was based on a real criminal case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woyzeck
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Christian_Woyzeck

 

^^^^Hell yes, some of the world's finest, I mean look who's on piano here. This entranced me last night, especially the singer's performance.

 

Listeners who are ambivalent about this music may, with encouragement and support, at least try give it a chance. I've seen that happen on this forum during my years here. I've also seen it happen at a chamber music concert I attended.

I specifically attended the concert to hear a piece by Berg, which I had struggled to appreciate. His String Quartet was sandwiched between two warhorses, one of them being Mozart after interval, and I forget the other.

The musicians explained how the themes which go through the work appear at the beginning, illustrating this with excerpts. They also talked about what was going on in Berg's life when he composed the piece. This information was also in the program notes, but the group wanted to justify their choice of playing this music, and help the audience to appreciate it. Before they played, one of them said that she hoped that the audience enjoys the Mozart, but asked them not to be afraid of the Berg, because its also a wonderful piece.

I liked how they acknowledged people's antagonism. Their aim was to help the audience understand the piece. I was familiar with it, but the performance allowed me to appreciate it more. As far as I could judge, it worked for others too. A woman behind me said to her friend after the Berg, "That was atonal but so emotional." A man told the usher when leaving to let the quartet know how he and his wife enjoyed the concert, especially the Berg.

 

Otello is the regular Italian getting rid of any th, ch, ph,
Wozzeck is apparently a kind of editing error in the belated first printed edition of the fragment that appeared over 40 years after Büchner's death. (Büchner is a bit of local hero where I come form, schools are named after him. They don't teach you about Liebig experimenting on people, though)

As exaggerated as the difficulties some audiences have with some 2nd Viennese piece 100 years later, I think it is not insignificant that if one looks at historical reviews, one finds similarly puzzled/negative ones for e.g. Debussy and Stravinsky. And even in the 1950s and 60s there were many listeners who found some of their music unbearably modern and many traditional conductors mostly avoided them. But in the last decades Debussy, Ravel, most of Bartok and pre-1940s Stravinsky have become standard repertoire and most audiences don't find them particularly tough going which is not true for 2nd Viennese School, a lot of which is still tough for many audiences despite having become standard among musicians.

 

I am not sure what your point is, the music by the SVS is regularly performed and recorded. Whether it is embraced as much as other music is irrelevant; it has an audience. Debussy and Ravel are not as widely popular as Beethoven and Mozart. So what?

 

If you want a real school of music which caused astonishing amounts of ink spilled back then, there's always Wagner

 

I love almost everything I've seriously listened to by Berg and Schoenberg, and I greatly admire Webern without yet loving him. One of my projects this year was to commit serious time and study to getting to know their works.

Unfortunately, or fortunately considering how good he was, Bach happened, and now I have Gardiner's take on the cantatas en route, so SVS will have to wait a little longer.

I have managed to listen to Wozzeck at least 10 times this year though, so not all bad, and I watched a performance of Lulu on YouTube for the first time which was also superb. I look forward to many happy hours in their company.

 

Are the LaSalle recordings still considered the go to interpretations of the 2nd Viennese string quartets or do listeners prefer more recent recordings?

I know I like the Artis Quartett recordings of Zemlinsky. And the Webern Chandos CD by the Schoenberg Quartet.

 

Are the LaSalle recordings still considered the go to interpretations of the 2nd Viennese string quartets or do listeners prefer more recent recordings?

I know I like the Artis Quartett recordings of Zemlinsky. And the Webern Chandos CD by the Schoenberg Quartet.

I prefer recent-ish performances to the LaSalle. You’ve already got Zemlinsky covered with the Artis Quartett on Nimbus and Webern, too, with the Schoenberg Quartet on Chandos. For Berg’s two quartets, try the Alban Berg Quartett on EMI (Warner) and the Leipziger Streichquartett on MDG, but also the Schoenberg Quartet on Chandos. These three recordings are all outstanding. For Schoenberg, try the Leipziger Streichquartett on MDG, Gringolts Quartet on BIS and Schoenberg Quartet on Chandos. You really can’t go wrong with any of these choices.

 

I do have the Chandos Berg but I haven't really listened to it closely. And I have the excellent Emerson recording of the Lyric Suite with vocal movement.

 

The LaSalle Quartet recordings remain competitive with all newcomers.

Having said that, quite a few recent issues are wholly worth hearing, especially, I'd say, those by the Leipziger Streichquartett. My favorite Webern cycle remains the Emerson Quartet, even over LaSalle. But really, as far as I have heard, there are no recordings of this repertoire that aren't recommendable.